21st Sunday Year A - Homily 3

Homily 3 - 2011

The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke all carry today’s story.  They all have Peter say: You are the Christ.  They all finish the story with: He gave the disciples strict orders not to tell anyone that he was the Christ.  In fact, Jesus never called himself Christ [or Messiah].  Why not?  Simply because people would misunderstand it.  Peter didn’t understand it.  Nor did the apostles generally.  They hoped for a Messiah who would lead them on [with God, of course, on their side], either to become the next world super-power, or, at least, to free their country from its Roman occupiers.

Matthew’s Gospel is the only one, though, that has Peter say of Jesus, not just that he was the Messiah, but that he was Son of the living God; and that then connects the Son of God insight with the founding of the Church: On this rock [on Peter’s faith insight] I will build my Church.

You are the Son of God.  We take it for granted – but let’s tease that out.  “You are the human expression, the human revelation, of God.”  God is like Jesus; Jesus is like God.  Jesus’ love, expressed practically in the way he lived, and particularly in the way he died, expressed the love of God.  Jesus’ teaching expressed the mind of God.  The only really reliable way to access the mind and heart of God is to look closely at Jesus.

Jesus’ love was often somewhat confronting.  He reached out, for example, to those at the edges, to those over the top.  He was criticised for eating with tax-collectors [generally regarded as small-time, sleazy, ruthless parasites], and with prostitutes.  Imagine how tongues would get into overdrive if I regularly invited to meals in the presbytery back in Hamilton the local prostitutes [if there are any].  Jesus didn’t seem to care what people would think – or the newspapers might say, or even about giving bad example.  Did God approve of the company that Jesus kept?  Yes.  That is what his being Son of God affirmed.  Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father in heaven.

Jesus talked about love; about loving your enemies; about loving the nation’s enemies.  He identified himself as gentle, that is, as non-violent.  He unmasked sin; he resisted evil; but he did so non-violently.  Eventually the power-brokers moved in and killed him.  He allowed it to happen and accepted it, reluctantly, but freely and deliberately.  Even after resurrection, he did not retaliate.  Son of God, one with God, human revelation of the face of God.

It is on this sense of Jesus, on this sense of God, that the Church is then founded.  It is in order to keep always before people’s minds this sense of God that the Church is founded.  The Church is founded not just to teach this message, to bear testimony to this message, but in order to be the practical human expression of this kind of love, across the centuries and throughout the world.  You and I are the Church.  It is to show this Christ, to be this Christ, to this mini-world of Coragulac that you exist as St Brendan’s.

It is wonderful the way that you here have risen to the challenge – not just to hang on as a parish, not just to survive, but to thrive.  God knows, our self-interested, consumption-saturated, frantic, unhappy, violent world needs you – to reveal the face of God who is love, and to love it with the three-dimensional, hands-on, love of God.  You are the Son of God.  On this rock I will build my Church.